w35 – cad renderings

So this was supposed to become a video multiple times, but the objective always seemed to change. Until then, here’s a few screenshots.

I’ve been experimenting with a stylized renderer for FEM/CAD type data. A typical FEM assembly usually looks like this 

The keen reader knows that I’ve already made an exporter for Abaqus, to which I have improved a bit to make it easier to handle assemblies. Not that this is visible in this example.

First big issue was my own line rendering routine, which still hasn’t stopped bugging me – but for minor lines it was a complete headache.

Turnes out that gl_enable(smooth_lines) isn’t the devil in the same way that gl_smooth_polygons used to be…and the bigger lines can always be fixed using bruteforce msaa 🙂 (still a shit solution – i am very aware…).

Instead of spending valuable time on the damn lines, time was prioritized on exploring different rendering styles. Here’s a few

Adding a glow behind also helped a lot – along with a pattern on the background.

 

More enhancements are on the drawing board. Can’t wait to continue on this project – Even if it look “hipster-ish” as my colleague described it 😀